It may be scientifically impossible, but is there an afterlife?

NEAR-DEATH experiences or NDEs are controversial. Many thousands of people claim to have had them but many in the scientifi c community say that they are impossible. Before his own NDE in 2008, renowned neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander (associate professor at Harvard Medical School) would have been among those quick to explain that although NDEs might feel real to the people having them, in truth they are simply fantasies produced by brains under extreme stress and that what people of faith call the “soul” is really a product of brain chemistry. However that was before the eminent brain doctor, who had operated on thousands of people in the course of his career, had a near-death experience himself after contracting a rare form of bacterial meningitis. The part of his brain that controls thought and emotion – in essence what makes us human – shut down completely.

Elizabeth Taylor had a near death experience when she 'died' during an operation i 1957

For seven days he lay in a deep coma. Then suddenly as his doctors were discussing the possibility of stopping treatment his eyes popped open and he spoke a perfectly formed sentence: “All is well.”

What he later had to tell of his experience while his body lay in a coma changed him for ever. Despite the fact that his “higher brain” was shown by brain scans not to be functioning at all during his coma he nonetheless experienced something so profound he is convinced the only explanation is that he journeyed beyond this world into the next. While there he encountered an angelic being who guided him into the deepest realms of superphysical existence, a place where he believes he met and spoke with the divine source of the universe itself. “Pull the plug and the TV goes dead, or so I would have told you before my own brain crashed,” said Dr Alexander.

“During my coma my brain wasn’t working improperly, it wasn’t working at all. Many of the NDEs reported happen when a person’s heart has shut down for a while but in my case the neocortex [higher brain] was out of the picture. I was encountering a world of consciousness that existed free of the limitations of my physical brain.”

Today Dr Alexander believes that God and the soul are real and death is not the end of personal existence but merely a transition. “My experience showed me that the death of the body and the brain are not the end of consciousness, that human experience continues beyond the grave.”

His conclusion comes as no surprise to Jacky Newcomb, British paranormal expert and an author dubbed The Angel Lady who has spent 35 years collecting stories of the afterlife including NDEs and whose latest book features some of the most extraordinary examples ever recorded. “After his recovery Dr Alexander knew without doubt there was another existence beyond this one,” says Newcomb. “He is just one of many people who have experienced ‘near death’. That is, they died but were then brought back to life.”

Donald Sutherland died from meningitis in 1979. and recalls floating outside his body

During my coma my brain wasn’t working improperly, it wasn’t working at all. I was encountering a world of consciousness that existed free of the limitations of my physical brain.

Dr Alexander

Her book includes research from Dr Bruce Greyson (a psychiatrist at the University of Virginia who wrote the overview about NDE for the Encyclopaedia Britannica) who, having studied more than 100 cases of incidents of near death, believes that NDEs fi rmly support the idea that the soul is capable of functioning outside the body. “A typical near-death experience occurs when someone is on the threshold of death or has actually been pronounced dead,” says Dr Greyson. “In the setting of tremendous trauma they are suddenly overwhelmed by an overwhelming feeling of peace and wellbeing. They have an absence of pain and often they can look back and see the physical body from another perspective.

“They may go through a tunnel, a dark place, towards a brilliant light that is experienced as a living being of light. They may encounter other beings there – sometimes deceased loved ones – who may guide them through a review of their lives and often show them some unearthly realm. Eventually they reach a point at which they either come back voluntarily or are sometimes sent back against their will. “ The problem with the physiological explanations, such as lack of oxygen to the brain, is that they are all based on the idea of a malfunction of the brain causing a hallucination.

What that doesn’t allow for is the enhanced mental function you see in an NDE. People report that their thought processes are incredibly clear, that they have vivid perceptions and a very clear memory of the whole experience but malfunctions of the brain tend to produce clouded perceptions and poor memory. None of the physiological explanations addresses the main features of near-death experiences.”

Some of Jacky Newcomb’s most intriguing case studies come from nurses and care workers who have reported their observations from patients who are very close to death. “The dying are sometimes aware, before they leave their body, that their deceased loved ones have started to gather round their bed. Often a nurse or a relative will witness the dying person starting to talk or interact with these souls,” she says. “For example, a granddaughter sitting with her grandmother – a very frail lady who was too weak to move – reported that in the moments before she died her grandmother sat bolt upright and said, ‘Here comes grandad and he’s bringing fl owers.’”

In one Dutch study conducted by researchers at Rijnstate Hospital in Arnhem, 344 patients who had been resuscitated after a cardiac arrest were investigated. The findings indicated that of those, 62 recalled an NDE which included various phenomena such as out-of-body experiences, seeing a tunnel of light and visits from deceased relatives.

Newcomb says that people who awake from an NDE are often angry when they return. “They frequently feel they have experienced a state of bliss and perfect love and are reluctant to leave it. People report they have seen colours that don’t exist in this world and seen incredible landscapes and crystal buildings.” They all seem to be unifi ed by one conviction: that the death of the physical body is not the end of life.